Did you send this info to TivoJerry? I know you said you could not prove it...

No, I didn't, because I couldn't prove it (and besides, it could've been a red herring anyway). But, while flailing around mightily earlier tonight, I *may* have been able to capture a series of forced connections that had "issues", and also the final forced connection that actually completed the job. So, I PMed TivoJerry, and we'll see if he thinks that this will contribute anything usable.

What I did notice -- the connection does seem to be somewhat "progressive". My first attempt actually shoveled across quite a few packets, my second, third, and fourth transferred less than 1/10th of the number of packets as compared to the first transfer, then my 5th (and successful!) transfer barely transferred more data than the 3 previous small "unsuccessful" transfers...but nevertheless, the TiVo liked the last transfer and went into "loading data". So, seems that when you do connect, the transfers can be (for want of a better word) "cumulative".

That may explain why clearing the logfiles actually helps -- if there isn't any accumulated data to cumulatively transfer (), you don't have the problem of the upload stalling out, so the download can simply roll.

ps. I'm not going to try and finish my guided setup until there's some kind of resolution.

Just my $0.02 here. TivoJerry has asked for network data on a failing Tivo so they can figure on which end is breaking almost a week ago and we haven't been able to get them the data, so its not like they haven't been trying.

I hope to be able to get the Network data early next week when my mom gets my hub.

I know I'm opening up a can of worms for my PM inbox, but for anyone affected by this can you send me your TSN. I have been given something to try and need a few volunteers.

:-D

Hmm... I wonder what the lead is.. I PM'ed him about renaming the log directory fixing my issue and he responded by asking for my TSN. I am a dialup user. I also offered to upload him my log directory because I renamed it.. I did not delete it. But he did not respond to that part of the PM. So I asked again if he wants it. Maybe he didn't respond because it would not do them any good.
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dlee0708 and others thanks for the info on wireshark etc

dlee0708,

Yes, we need to be thankful that Tivo is even bothering.. because many companies would have told us too bad, your stuff is too old for us to care. They have been trying to get info out of us and we have not been giving them what they need.

About the connection issue... yes I sometimes can't connect but it is almost always the downloading failed error. There are also people who get Service Unavailable who fix it by deleting the log directory.
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I fixed the telnet by doing stuff like rebooting the Tivo and computer and fiddling with the router settings. I do not know if it was related to getting stuck in Guided Setup or not. It did coincide with it.

Just my $0.02 here. TivoJerry has asked for network data on a failing Tivo so they can figure on which end is breaking almost a week ago and we haven't been able to get them the data, so its not like they haven't been trying.

I hope to be able to get the Network data early next week when my mom gets my hub.

i know people have been trying, but this is the first i hear that there is "something to try" from engineering and not trying to find out what's wrong with the hundreds of S1's failing right now, which is what the CSR's will try to do if you call...

Yes, we need to be thankful that Tivo is even bothering.. because many companies would have told us too bad, your stuff is too old for us to care. They have been trying to get info out of us and we have not been giving them what they need.

I don't want to start an argument but the above statement brushed me the wrong way. First, I assume you are aware many of us have lifetime SERVICE, which means for the life of the box they have to provide service. Your statement sounds like they're doing us a favor by providing service we already paid for.

Secondly, since when is it our responsibility to provide logs and all this other info to fix a problem tivo caused to start with? Sure none of us have a problem with providing them that info, but it's not our fault they can't gather the data needed from their own test machines...and they do have Series 1 machines of their own they can get data from.

Lastly, if you read the thread regarding the suggestions problem, it sounds suspiciously similar to this problem in regards to everyone starting to have the issue at a certain date, lack of CSR help, lack of interest by tivo employees, and tivo relying on S1 users to help them fix it. I would bet it ends up being a change they made in early December, and it will probably be another mystery fix without a real software update.

None of this is meant to be directed at tivojerry or tivopony who have been great over the years and seem to be our only links to real assistance.

P.S. Is there a way to get them that info without turbonet? I have an old 24 port HP hub, three S1 tivos, two of them using built in modem, and one of them using an external modem. If anyone lives in the Kitsap County area in Washington and has turbonet and wants to use my hub, maybe we could work something out.

Aha! I think that I was able to get another tcpdump of a complete fail/fail/succeed download. I ran a couple of tcpdumps this time, one to log all of the packets coming to/from my TiVo, and another logging all traffic from 204.176.49.2. To help indicate that there weren't any "network" issues between my system and TiVo's, I ran a continual 10-second-interval ping from my gateway to the TiVo server. The "internal" tcpdump has all 3 transfer attempts captured (yay!), and the "external" tcpdump has the 2nd and 3rd attempt captured.

Aha! I think that I was able to get another tcpdump of a complete fail/fail/succeed download. I ran a couple of tcpdumps this time, one to log all of the packets coming to/from my TiVo, and another logging all traffic from 204.176.49.2. To help indicate that there weren't any "network" issues between my system and TiVo's, I ran a continual 10-second-interval ping from my gateway to the TiVo server. The "internal" tcpdump has all 3 transfer attempts captured (yay!), and the "external" tcpdump has the 2nd and 3rd attempt captured.

I'll PM this info to TivoJerry in case it's of any interest.

BittMann

Good to have what you've done documented. You have probably saved us many days of waiting! Out of curiousity, what does a traceroute to Tivo look like from your boxes? Are there any killer hops? I seriously doubt this has anything to do with the problem because of the widespread incidence.

P.S. Is there a way to get them that info without turbonet? I have an old 24 port HP hub, three S1 tivos, two of them using built in modem, and one of them using an external modem. If anyone lives in the Kitsap County area in Washington and has turbonet and wants to use my hub, maybe we could work something out.

I don't want to start an argument but the above statement brushed me the wrong way.

I am sorry I offended you. Yes, I agree with most of the stuff you said. I know that they owe us the service. I have lifetime too. But that doesn't mean that most companies would do it. They would make us do a class action suit to do it.

American Online started as QuantumLink which was an online service for Commdore users. In its last days stuff did not work on it because they were using the hardware for American Online instead and it was messing up the Commodore side. They knew it and would not do anything to fix it. People were talking of lawsuits but it was not done. Remember the early days when there were complaints to the Attorney General.. that was because they did not have enough hardware to support their users. That was after they had closed QuantumLink but it makes my point. On the last day of service, Commodore users only got 75 phone lines for the whole country and many could not get on. I was one of them. They did not have to close QLink... Commodore users would have stayed on if they would have continued to support us.

I don't agree that Tivo should get the error data themselves. Maybe none of their test boxes are experiencing the symptoms.

I agree that support is handling it terrible if it is true that when you call they just tell you that your Tivo is broken... when they have been told that there are solutions. They could at least say you might be experiencing an issue that many are right now and we are working on the solution instead of telling them their Tivo is broken.

Quote:

P.S. Is there a way to get them that info without turbonet? I have an old 24 port HP hub, three S1 tivos, two of them using built in modem, and one of them using an external modem. If anyone lives in the Kitsap County area in Washington and has turbonet and wants to use my hub, maybe we could work something out.

I am in Tacoma... not in the same county but maybe we could set something up. I have never done anything like the tests they are asking for though. Is your hub the old kind that can do the tests? People have posted that only older hubs or very expensive ones work for the test.

...
and they do have Series 1 machines of their own they can get data from.

[/b]

Tivo probably does have Series 1s to test with, the problem is they probably all work fine just like by brothers. My mom and brother have basically identical Series 1s, both with lifetimes and both with Turbonet the only difference is my moms has a larger hard drive.

My moms can't connect at all, my brothers works flawlessly (he didn't even know there were any issues).

Brenda: Glad you got out of guided setup. Sorry for treating you like a dumbass. It didn't seem to me that you understood what I was trying to say. Having made the same kind of mistakes myself as a newbie I just assume everyone is as dumb as I am. The smarter and more polite posters here stayed silent, so I butted in.

My personal theory on the problem is still digital artifacts and/or muxing of the POTS connections. I think the phone company equipment switching the calls varies from place to place and you never know what route your call is taking before it arrives at the Tivo mothership. I think many phone companies or switching equipment is digital and that the signal is converted so many times from digital to analog or relayed over VOIP or who knows what -- they are playing post office with the modem calls by the Series 1 machines to the mothership. But how do I explain network failures? I don't know. I don't have the failure using a CacheCard, just with dial-up.

I am sorry I offended you. Yes, I agree with most of the stuff you said. I know that they owe us the service. I have lifetime too. But that doesn't mean that most companies would do it. They would make us do a class action suit to do it.

Oh you didn't offend me, your statements just made it sound like they were doing us a favor and we're obligated to fix our own problems.

Quote:

Originally Posted by brendag4

I don't agree that Tivo should get the error data themselves. Maybe none of their test boxes are experiencing the symptoms.

I said the users aren't obligated to provide it, but we do so happily. In other words, tivopony and tivojerry are doing their job and we're doing them a favor to get back our service that we already paid for.

Quote:

Originally Posted by brendag4

I am in Tacoma... not in the same county but maybe we could set something up. I have never done anything like the tests they are asking for though. Is your hub the old kind that can do the tests? People have posted that only older hubs or very expensive ones work for the test.

TivoJerry told me that there were no tests a dialup user could do.

I believe what they meant was, you need a hub to sniff packets from other machines on the LAN. A switch is what most people have these days, and a switch only sends/receives packets to the destination/source machine and doesn't allow you to sniff packets that don't belong to the machine you're sniffing on...in other words you wouldn't be able to sniff tivo packets from your PC if it's going through a switch, unless you have a management switch that allows you to do it.

What I have is a gigantic old management hub...all you need is any hub and turbonet to do the tests, but I don't have turbonet. If this problem is still around in a week, I may have turbonet on one tivo and be able to give them the data they need, as I have a friend in Cali that asked if I wanted the turbonet out of his old tivo.

About dialup users.. I should have specified that TivoJerry's PM to me didn't mean it wasn't possible for dialup users to help it meant at the time they did not have a test they wanted a dialup user to do. But now there is something they can do which is give the TSN # as TivoJerry mentioned.

Dcstager..

Quote:

Brenda: Glad you got out of guided setup. Sorry for treating you like a dumbass. It didn't seem to me that you understood what I was trying to say.

Thanks. I accept your apology :-D

I'm not a newbie but I don't know about the network sniffing type stuff.

Oh you didn't offend me, your statements just made it sound like they were doing us a favor and we're obligated to fix our own problems.

Badcrc:

I was just wording it gently because so many people were posting saying things like Tivo was doing it on purpose to get rid of the Series 1 users. I was trying to cut them some slack.

I definitely feel that they need to fix it or they need to do something about the Lifetime subscription people.

Quote:

I believe what they meant was, you need a hub to sniff packets from other machines on the LAN.

Thanks for the explanation. I do not know much about sniffing etc.

Quote:

What I have is a gigantic old management hub...all you need is any hub and turbonet to do the tests, but I don't have turbonet.

Seems most people are missing some part of the equation to do the tests. For example, I have a turbonet but no broadband or hub.

For those keeping track... the next call I noticed got a Failed. Service unavailable error. So yeah, renaming the log directory fixed my problem of getting out of Guided Setup, but the main problem is still there and is stopping calls from completing. (Well at least now I will be able to get in with telnet instead of having to literally pull the drive to access /var/log.)

I am not forcing calls in case that is important on Tivo's end of it to figure out the problem.. but of course if I don't hear back after a while I will force calls again.

I checked late to see if my issue was shared by anyone else. We have sometimes iffy phone lines and I blamed them. But now, I see, that's not it at all. It seems somewhat concurrent with the Suggestions going away (which are now back--thank you Tivo Inc!) that the phone calls started failing. I get intermittent Service Unavailable or Service Disrupted messages all the time. And I have to as others put it, "babysit" the TiVo all the time to ensure that it has guide data.

I have a Philips Series 1 that's now 10 years old with the lifetime sub. I just missed the cutoff for grandfathering and never took advantage of an upgrade offer. It's just that it's always worked and I was happy with it. Now I wish they would offer me a transfer one more time -- I'd jump at it this time. I think that with support for these dinosaurs being so sporadic fixes will keep taking longer and longer.

I have a Series-1 (HDR312) on Dialup, original modem. Copper POTS phone-line, I'm in MA. All short-calls are successful. Longer ones fail all but about once per week. When they fail (claiming call interrupted), they always last 5min 30sec +/- 10sec. Successful calls are 6-7 minutes. Somehow I don't think this is on my end.....

I'd like to try this but I am trapped in guided setup and now my Tivo isn't showing up in the dhcp clients table. At what point is it supposed to acquire an ip address?

So it wasn't just me losing telnet once I was in Guided Setup.

See my messages... I will summarize it here but it might help you to read my other messages. I was stuck in Guided Setup. I was not able to get telnet working during this time. I had to pull the drive and rename the log directory that way. (You can delete it but I saved it in case Tivo wanted it.)

After renaming the logs directory, I had to call in 2 or 3 times. I think the 3rd time it completed way too fast. Then of course it had to manipulate the data.

I then had to mess around to get telnet working. Some of that might have been my inexperience with setting up a network.. but your message shows that maybe it was not just me. I am not sure what I did that got telnet working again. I did stuff like rebooting the computer, Tivo, and router multiple times. I did not have to reinstall any files or anything. I know I ended up changing the number that the network starts at from 100 to 101. I do not remember having to do that before.

i'd rather not pull the drive so i'm gonna keep trying to get it to acquire an ip address. may have to do with dhcp leases and default time settings. i have another router i can hook up in the meantime and to try it there in isolation. i've never telneted into my tivo but know my way around pc's and unix. my instantcake drive may only have ftp - but that should be enough to delete logs.

My Sony SVR-2000 using dial-up on a POTS line is still having problems. It hasn't been able to connect for the last 5 days. The current error says Failure: Service Interrupted though I have had different errors listed at different times.

i'd rather not pull the drive so i'm gonna keep trying to get it to acquire an ip address. may have to do with dhcp leases and default time settings. i have another router i can hook up in the meantime and to try it there in isolation. i've never telneted into my tivo but know my way around pc's and unix. my instantcake drive may only have ftp - but that should be enough to delete logs.

thanks

I think my instantcake had telnet.. I don't think I added it.

I did not want to pull my drive either... I tried everything I could to get around it and was not able to. If you figure out how, please post. I even did stuff like go through each screen and then try to telnet. (In case it would start working at a certain point in the process.) But maybe someone more experienced with networks than me can come up with a solution.

About getting in to delete the files with FTP... when I have tried to issue commands in the past, FTP does not allow me to execute them. I guess the Tivo does not understand them coming from an FTP program. Not sure if I tried to delete a file or not. I can't remember if I was able to FTP in during the Guided Setup or if that didn't work either. If I remember right, it didn't work.. because I don't remember trying to issue a delete command.